I became a customer of Bank Of America when their corporation
bought out the Bank I was a customer of (First Union). I had
an automobile loan with First Union which was taken over by
Bank of America. Two other members of my family also had
automobile loans that transfered over to Bank of America. In
addition, 5 of my friends had checking/savings accounts with
Bank of America, so the experiences that I will tell about
are not just restricted to my own.
The automobile loan I had with BOA (Bank Of America) had
approximately 2 years left on it (it was originally a 5-year
loan, with 3 years paid off). After having to deal with
customer relations and the finance department for about a
year I could no longer take the frustration and inefficiency
and paid off my loan early just to be done with my relationship
with them.
My other family members that had loans with them only had less than a year left on their
contracts and when they were paid off were also so relieved
to be done with their business. All five of my friends that
had accounts with BOA closed them within 6-months of BOA
taking over their previous bank.
What was so frustrating? What was inefficient? What happened?
Well to begin with after the loan was transfered I received
2 letters from BOA within the span of a week -- the letters
told me that BOA had assumed the loan and payments were to
be made to them now. That was fine, but both letters had
two totally different addresses on them where the payments
were to go (mail in). The addresses were hundreds of miles
apart.
When I called to see where I was really supposed to send the
payments to, I was given a different 3rd address, and told
that with the buy-out there was some problems in setting up
all the new accounts. I was assured that the 3rd address
was the proper address, and they would even mail me out some
pre-addressed envelopes. Cool, that was good.
So I mailed my payments in the pre-addressed envelopes.
Then the calls and mail started - my payment was not received
and I now had late fees, plus if I did not bring the account
up to date within 5 days I would be reported to a credit
bureau. But, wait a minute, I had mailed the payment???
They never did get that payment. I had to resend another
check WITH late fees included and put a Stop Payment on the
missing check. Not good, but I could not blame the bank --it
could have gotten lost in the mail.
Next month I mail my payment again in the pre-addressed
envelope. Again, I get a call about missing my payment date.
But, this time I had the returned mail in my hand with a
big post office stamp on it saying I had the wrong address
and no forwarding address had been left. What???!!!
Another call to disbelieving customer relations.
But this time, they said, ’’oh, no, you should have
never sent it to that address!’’ And they proceeded to give
me another address to mail my payments to. Well, I did
not open that returned letter, but put it in another
envelope and mailed it back -- I disputed the late fees and
wanted them to see that my check was sent to an address that
did not exist - an address they had given me!
Two months of late payments and fees!!! And neither was
my fault.
Another issue I had with them was that I always sent more
than my payment due amount. Apparently their computer could
not handle an amount different from the payment due, for I
received at least 5 other calls about my payment not being
credited. The computer had ’’stuck’’ my OVER-payment into a
different account because it was not the amount that was actually
due. What kind of system must they have there!!!!???
My other family members had similar experiences and frustrations
with everyone they had to deal with. The answers were always
different depending on just who you spoke with. No one seemed
to know just what the other person was doing and it was a
bad experience all around.
When the loans were paid off it took almost 6 months to get
the title to the cars. They were ’’lost’’ somewhere and BOA had
to get copies of the titles to provide to all of us.
I had nothing but bad experiences with BOA and will never
do business with them again. I think that 8 people (myself included
in that number) that I know who had similar complaints and
frustrations is a number to be considered.
BOA may be a large bank, but they do not seem to have the
consistency and reliability in place to make it a trustworthy
bank to me. Banking rules are banking rules -- these people
just seemed to make things up as they went along.
If you decide to do business with BOA I wish you good luck.